One of the negatives of writing this report every month is it makes one aware of the rapid passage of time, September already, wish I had a switch as on a lathe and turn it to very slow. Mustn’t dwell on it though just get on. Once again we had the pleasure of a demonstration by the very laid back Pat Walsh, to me Pat always seems so relaxed and he makes me feel the same, adding to the enjoyment of his demo. This time Pat choose to show us his take on a decorated bowl which he himself described as a fun piece, a piece he likes to do when he has nothing of importance on and like a lot of us hates to see the lathe idle. Pat had brought along a partly worked piece, a disk of beech around 250mm in diameter and 70mm or so deep. This he mounted on the lathe on a screw chuck and proceeded to shape the bottom to a soft ogee finishing up to an almost sharp edge and finishing this with a scraper, pointing out that the scraper properly sharpened should give off a fine shaving and not dust. Pat had left a small spigot so he reversed the piece satisfying himself it was true before marking out a circle roughly one third the diameter in the centre. This was to be the bowl which Pat hollowed out, going in deep enough to remove the hole left by the screw, here again Pat used a nosed scraper to finish the inside. Pat cut a line about 10mm around the bowl and another 10mm in from the outer edge to define the line which he intended to decorate and having sealed these covered both with masking tape. Then with an aerosol of black car cellulose he painted in the area of bare wood spraying it lightly with several coats until he achieved the desired result.
This blackened area was where Pat intended to decorate and using a small hand held carving tool, {these show up in Lidl from time to time) he first cut a grove dividing it into quarters then in opposite sides cut a random pattern of squiggles, that’s the only description I can think of. In the remaining quarters and mirroring each other Pat cut the outline of a tree, having cut one freehand he used tracing paper to copy in the other. To highlight the decoration Pat coloured in the groves using paint pens of various colours and as the photos show an attractive and fun piece where you can let your inner artist run wild. Thank you Pat for a very entertaining afternoon.
The competition results are already up and as there only two months left it should be an interesting finish. That’s it for now look forward to seeing you all again next month until then work safe.
Pat Gannon
